Education Legislation

Re “Democrats Offer Bush a Compromise on Education,” Feb. 25: Such a deal! All Bush has to do is drastically increase federal education spending, put more federal strings on it and, oh, by the way, forget about vouchers even as a last resort for schools that are long-running failures. He’d better grab this one fast; the Democrats are bending over in bipartisanship.

To abandon the one thing that can shake the status quo of decades of failure in public education, namely the threat of outside competition, is to abandon hope for reform. Yet that is the price the Democrats want to exact for allegedly compromising with Bush.

I hope the president sticks to his guns and, if the plan fails, maybe federal aid to education will wither on the vine of deadlock. That’s not an unpleasant outcome by any means.

WILLIAM BRADSHAW

San Diego